Joshua Bell became artistic director of the St Martin’s Academy in 2011. New to his discography, Bach’s concertos in E and A minor are followed by contemporary adaptations, with strings, by Julian Milone (composer/academic, he also plays in the Philharmonia), from older violin/piano transcriptions of two solo pieces, plus the ‘Air’ – taken at a rather old-school slow tempo, and with Bell prominent in the mix as leader/director. He introduces tasteful modest decorations. These are very cleanly played concerto performances, seriousness in slow movements contrasted with joyous finales, tempos steadily maintained. The crisp recordings were made at Air Studios, London, in Apr ’14. (There’s no booklet PDF with the downloads.) CB

Sound Quality: 85%

Hi-Fi News Lab Report

As CB declares, this is a ‘crisp’ recording with a good dynamic range, no digital clipping and low noise. However the range of these strings [especially in the Allegro, see Graph] clearly extends beyond the 21kHz of this 44.1kHz file. PM